The Eric Metaxas Show - Michael Gibson

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

Michael Gibson looks into what's going on with college indoctrination in his new book, "Paper Belt on Fire: How Renegade Investors Sparked a Revolt Against the University."

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m.investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. They say it's a thin line between love and hate, but we're working every day to thicken that line, or at least to make it a double or triple line. Now here's your line jumping host, Eric Mattaxas.

Hey there, folks. As you know on this program, we always try to give you a little hope. You know, we talk about all kinds of subjects. And every now and again, something comes across the transom that I say, what the heck is this? This is really cool. I'm holding in my hands a book called Paper Belt on Fire. That'll intrigue you, right? Paper Belt on Fire, how renegade investors.

sparked a revolt against the university. If you listen to this program, you know, I'm all about that. I love that idea. On the back of the book is a blurb, an endorsement, an encomium from Peter Thiel, whom some of you know just through My Socrates in the City event or from the culture at large, probably. But Peter Thiel says about this book, Paper Belt on Fire, part adventure tale, part manifesto, paper belt on fire, is a battle cry for anyone who ever dreamed of resting power back from corrupt institutions or of nailing the truth to the cathedral door. You may know that I wrote a big book about Martin Luther who nailed something to a cathedral door about 500 years ago.

I am thrilled to have the author and the perpetrator of the four set events. His name is Michael Gibson as my guest. Michael, welcome the program. Thanks for having me on. It's great to be here, big fan. This is, well, you're really kind. This is a huge concept, what you've done. So I want my audience to understand it because I barely do.

Tell us, I mean, first give us the short version so we can track with you. What is it that you and a group of investors did? Well, let's start with the Reformation and Martin Luther. So, you know, funny enough. And then that's Peter being clever with the blur because we started a venture capital fund and we were thinking about naming it. And names are very important in the book and what we do. And what we realized is that modern universities, there's a historical analogy with the state of the church or the Catholic Church in the 16th century. the geeky analogy we like to draw was that at the time, you know, the church was selling a piece of paper at great cost and told people it was a way they could save their souls.

All you had to do was fork over some cash to the church. And when Luther nailed his 95 feces to the church store, and, you know, what he was protesting against was mainly the sale of these indulgences. And so the analogy we like to draw is that, you know, nowadays there's an institution. they're selling a piece of paper. They're telling you it's the only way you can save their soul. And instead of the indulgence, it's called a diploma. Okay. That is brilliant.

That is absolutely brilliant. And listen, as somebody with a diploma from Yale University, I know better than anybody that what you're saying is true. These are corrupt institutions. Corrupt on a number of levels, intellectually, very, very corrupt. But the idea that you perceived that, and you could frame it so neatly that, you know, yes, in 1517, we were protesting, selling a piece of paper, which is a sham. And that, lo and behold, secular institutions today, five centuries later, doing exactly the same thing.

So, kudos to you just for thinking of that. But when you started your firm, this was in your mind. Right, yeah. So we named the fund 1517 after the year Luther nailed the thesis to the church door. And what's great about numbers is, you know, we put them on T-shirts and stuff and people right away say 15-17. What does that mean? You know, and then I get to tell some story like I just did. I did that. That's how we started the fund in 2015.

But before that, you know, we, so I worked for Peter Thiel. I helped him launch a fellowship in 2010, so five years prior to the fund. And these are the events recounted it in the book. And we initially started a nonprofit. it. We gave $100,000 to 20 individuals a year, but there were two conditions that were noteworthy. One was that you had to be 19 and under to apply. And the second newsworthy condition was that you had to drop out of school or not be enrolled. And so we gave out these grants over the years and some of the big success stories that some of your listeners or people watching might have

heard of. Like in 2012, 2013, we discovered the young man, Vitalik Boutarin, helped him launched the cryptocurrency Ethereum. There's another more recent Adobe bought a company called Figma for $20 billion. We helped the founder start that company in 2012. So we had been doing this nonprofit and we decided, wait a second, we could be making money doing this. So I wanted to tell this business story that by investing in people who don't have college degrees, who don't have credentials, can we show that there is a fulfilling path to a successful career without that credential. I mean, it goes way beyond that because not only are most people wasting a lot of money and a lot of time getting a piece of paper that's essentially worthless, if it were merely

worthless, they'd be wasting time and money. But it's worse than worthless. It is usually a ticket to decades of ideological confusion. And that has become increasingly true over the decades. It was true when I was at Yale in the 80s. It was already very true then, but it's become increasingly true when Buckley wrote about Yale in his 1951 book, God and Man at Yale. He's writing about the Yale of the late 40s.

So this has been part of the academic world, but it's gotten worse and worse and worse and worse. So for you guys to be encouraging people not to go to college and to do these things, I just want to say thank you for that. So what exactly... Well, it's been fun to pick those fights.

Yeah, so I I wanted to, so we've talked about higher education as this institution that relies on a piece of paper. The title of the book, Paper Belt on Fire, that expands that theme. So a friend of mine, we were just jamming one night, trading ideas. And we thought, and this is back 2012, 2013, we thought, just as the Rust Belt defines the Midwest and the hollowed out industries, you know, that are left barren due to either globalization or technological change, We thought there were some technological trends and political trends that were going to cause trouble for what we decided was the paper belt. Now, this is from Washington, D.C. to Boston. In D.C., they print money, laws, regulations on paper. In Delaware that companies incorporate on paper. In New York, there's media and advertising on paper, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Madison Avenue.

And then we thought Boston as the pinnacle of, you know, the arch symbol of American higher education, Harvard and MIT are printing diplomas on paper. So what all these institutions have in common that are paper-based is that I think in terms of computer security, I'm very influenced by the cypher punks. And what they notice is that if you're using a piece of paper, you need an institution to validate it and authenticate it. to validate that, one, it's real, and two, that whatever information it's signaling is accurate and true and reliable. And so we can think of the Federal Reserve, for instance, and the Treasury Department, they tell us that these dollar bills they print are worth something and they authenticate whether they're real. And likewise, we've been trusting universities to print diplomas and authenticate them and say, hey, this is real. But what I've noticed is that in any of these institutions over the last 40, 50 years, the people running them are either incompetent or have become corrupted. You know, whether it's collusion inside, insiders against outsiders, or just plain old, hey, we don't know what we're doing.

It's clear that the performance of these institutions have declined over time. So that's higher ed, the media, and even the Federal Reserve. You name it. We could go across the board. Well, I say often that all these legacy institutions are dead. and people need to wake up to the fact that they're dead. Yale is dead. Harvard is dead.

The New York Times is dead. They're dead. Whatever they once were, they are now decidedly not that. They have been sliding. They had been sliding for a long time. But they weren't like really fully dead until recently. It wasn't until recently that I could say the New York Times is mostly trash. I could say five or 10 years ago, there's a lot there that I don't like.

They're leftward leaning. But they have really, become horrible, not just ideologically off, but really horrible. I know for me, I used to read the Sunday times just for the magazine and the book review. And like you, I noted, like the book reviews were excellent. And then all of a sudden, six, five years ago, that got terrible. Well, that became terrible. We've got a lot more to talk about, folks.

The book is Paper Belt on Fire. Michael Gibson is my guest. Don't go away. Every day, the parallel economy grows bigger and bigger. It's powered by everyday Americans who are sick and tired of all the woke propaganda being jammed into every product they consume. Big mobile companies are no different. For years, they've been dumping millions into leftist causes. And we had to take it because you needed a cell phone.

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Visit legacy pminvestments.com to get started. You're going to love this free new tool that they've added. Please go check it out today. That's legacy PM Investments.com. Hey, folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Michael Gibson. He's the author of Paper Belt on Fire, how renegade investors sparked a revolt against the university.

Michael, we're talking about a lot of things. When people read the book, Paper Belt on Fire, basically what are they getting? Is it the story of specifically how it was that you did this, or is there more to it? Yeah, that's exactly. Right. So we've talked about the manifesto, meaning, you know, what's wrong with these institutions. But I also, I wanted to tell our story because I thought it was an interesting business story. Peter Thiel is a fascinating individual. I think a lot of people have seen him in public and so on. But there aren't many accounts of what it's like to work with him. He's very creative individual. So I wanted to, in part, you know, take people behind the scenes and show what it's like to work in Silicon Valley with such a creative person. But then there's just, you know, my own story and the person I started my business with, Danielle Strachman.

We just have no business doing what we're doing. So we work in venture capital. But I am a, you know, I say defrocked philosopher. I was on my way to getting a Ph.D. in philosophy. I dropped out, you know, met Peter Thiel. Now, hold on a second. You were on your way to getting a Ph.D. in philosophy. Was it at Oxford University?

Yeah, that's correct. Never heard of that. Where's that? Oxford University, no, honestly, just the thought of that, you know, it's hard for me not to get excited about that because Oxford, I have a love of Oxford and Cambridge. But to some extent, I'm not as aware by any means of how far they've fallen or whether they've fallen anywhere similarly to Harvard and Yale and America. But American institutions, people who still think there's something there. I just want to repeat, there ain't. it's pathetic and you're getting a piece of paper.

It's like, you know, a German mark in 1923. By the time you go to the store, it has dropped in value by 78%. So, but anyway, so you were getting a philosophy doctorate. Yeah, I studied ancient philosophy, you know, Plato, Aristotle, so on. And then, but, you know, deep down, I was always a writer. This is, you know, some time ago now. But I, you know, there's this idea that you imitate people as role models. And maybe I took it too literally because when I was 19 on the back of the book, just as you looked at mine, I looked at T.S. Eliot.

And I saw that, you know, this poet I loved had a PhD in philosophy from Harvard. The journalist Tom Wolfe, another big influence on me when I was 19. I saw he had a PhD in American Studies from Yale. So that's how crazy I was then. I was like, hey, you know, if I want to write like, like, my hero role models, you know, maybe there's something to that. Of course, I fell in love with the subject matter on its own, but, you know, after a long time, you know, a number of years in grad school, I decided, I was actually in the basement at a bookstore in Oxford, and I picked up

Wolf's collection on the new journalism. And he tells this amazing story of his own experience leaving academia and setting foot in the newsroom and just getting lit on fire. And I was like, and I thought to myself, okay, what the hell? What am I doing in grad school? I need to just go out there and write. So I dropped out. And, you know, I wanted in the same, it's like I'm still influenced by people like Wolf because I wanted to tell stories. You know, I did when I originally pitched the book, a lot of people, publishers were saying, just, you know, make arguments against higher education. This is a policy book. And I said, no, I got to tell you these stories because it's, I got to take you behind the scenes. And you can develop themes in ways that you can't.

You know, it's like Wolf, the new journalism, use all the techniques of narrative fiction, short stories and so on. And that's what I wanted to do. I found Encounter, the publisher, or they found me, and it was great to work with them because they gave me the creative freedom to tell that story. And I hope people enjoy it because it is crazy. It's like, how does this ex-philosopher who, you know, has no background in finance, my co-founder is a charter school founder in San Diego. principal of that school. And we come into Peter Thiel's orbit. We launched this program and then a fund to back only people without college degrees.

And as I like to point out, we've made our investors more money than the Ocean's 11 team steals from the Bellagio Casino. Well, I've got to tell you, first of all, I have to say it's just so cool how, you know, we do model ourselves on people. I didn't model myself on Tom Wolfe, but I had the privilege of meeting him a few times. He actually came to one or two Socrates in the city events we had, one with Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute up in Seattle. And I bumped into Tom Wolfe a few times walking up and down Madison Avenue in New York. Just a hero.

As for T.S. Eliot, I modeled myself on him, not by pursuing a doctorate. but by writing light verse, like, you know, big opossums, whatever, practical cats and so on that. That's the kind of way. But it is interesting how those kinds of lives affect us. And I do have to tell you that when you talk about making a decision not to write a book on policy the way you did, very wise decision. Because those books, you know, come into the studio here by the barge load. I don't, I'm not quite sure why people write them because they're not often particularly readable. stories are usually gripping if they're well done.

And what you have here is an amazing story with lots of pieces. So I'm glad you found a publisher in kind of books who was willing to say, this is a story. This is, this is fun. Let's not bleach the fun out of this story and make it about topic policy. Yeah, I wanted people to laugh. And then the other thing, yeah, some of the themes, I mean, maybe it's pretentious, but I really wanted to develop these themes about creativity.

And, you know, I think as a nation, we've become less creative than we once were. And by creativity, I don't just mean novels and poems, but, you know, scientific discoveries and so on. So that's a major part of the book is that we're fighting against the stagnation that the country has been in. I mean, we can agree that computer technology has advanced quite rapidly. but when you look at other sectors of the world, we're not making progress at the rate we once used to. So I think America used to be a more creative society. I lived in San Francisco for 10 years. In some ways, it was the peak of Silicon Valley.

But on the other hand, I saw that creative cluster destroyed by just stupid policy and bad leadership. It's pretty sad. I mean, you can think of Detroit in the mid-20th century was the Silicon Valley of the, the automotive industry and that too faded away, you know, for a number of reasons. But, you know, I saw Silicon Valley destroyed in San Francisco in particular over that time. I wanted to show that degradation and make it plain. So it's like we can, we can, I wanted to examine creativity with an individual's. That's why I tell my personal story. I wanted to talk about groups and teams and how that can be creative. And then I want to address the city and the nation as well. And I think that's

only possible if you're telling stories, you know, in a gripping way, not, yeah, yeah, like, you know, some list of policy proposals and bill, and bullet points. Well, there is, there's just a lot of stuff in the book. And to me, it's entertaining because, you know, you guys, there's, there's a mischievousness to it. And I think, you know, you could say that that's at the heart of all creativity. And you could also say at the heart of all creativity is that thing we call freedom. And part of the reason we've become a less creative culture is because we've become less free. And that's part of the magic, the secret sauce that enable us to put, you know, 12 men on the surface of the moon, invent the light bulb, like invent the airplane. I mean, it is unbelievable what America was able to do over the decades.

It is almost unbelievable. And you have to ask why. What is it? because we know it's not in the DNA, literally, because people here are come from, you know, Marconi was Italian. I mean, what is it about America? And that's kind of what you're getting at here, the larger idea. And then the stultifying effect of today's universities,

which seem to be anti-freedom, anti-American, anti-creative. It's like they want to produce wonks or I'm not sure what they want to do. They certainly are drained the life out of, a lot of disciplines. Yeah, America is still, I mean, as bad as things have become, I still think if you compare us to other countries out there in terms of creativity, you know, we still are at the forefront. I don't think Elon Musk could start rocket ship companies if he had moved to France, right?

So like you're saying- Is there any doubt about that? I mean, there is no doubt about that. And you kind of wonder why that is. And why did he leave California for 10? Texas. Well, there you go. It could be micro laws. We helped a young French woman start a company, actually. And she decided she, Delaware based company, C-Corp or whatever, but she moved to Paris to try to be closer to home. And then she was breaking the law because there's a law in France that says no one can work more than 35 hours. But when you're starting a company, you know, you're working 70 hours. And think about that. Think about how despicable, how condescending. How dare they tell people. how much they can work. I mean, that's, that's its own bizarre kind of tyranny. But it is utter tyranny.

Folks, I'm talking to Michael Gibson. He's the author of a new book, Paper Belt on Fire, how Renegate Investors sparked a revolution against the university. Much more to come. Don't go away. Tell me why Relief Factor is so successful at lowering or eliminating pain. I'm often asked that question just the other night. I was asked that question.

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Click on the Radio Podcast Square to grab a pair of the all-season slippers for $25. Limited to 10 pairs at checkout. Enter promo code Eric or call 800-978-3057, 800-978 3057 for this incredible offer. So please order now. Folks, welcome back. We're talking to Michael Gibson, the author of a new book, Paper Belt, on Fire, how renegade investors sparked revolt against the university. Now, Michael, I don't know if you're too young to get the reference,

but I'm too young, but I just happen to know that paper belts, you know, back in the Depression, when people couldn't afford a leather belt, they would make a belt out of cardboard. So this brings up the image for me, paper belt on fire of that, like that level of poverty that was a result of the crash of 29. But let me just add. that. Yeah, well, since you wrote the book, all these people are listening, so I'm, I'm embarrassed for you. No, seriously, you need to know. You're responsible for this information.

You're young. You're young. It's okay. But honestly, when we're talking about what you did, you sparked a revolt against the university. Where do you see it going? In other words, I see, by the grace of God, a lot of these corrupt institutions, whether it's Yale or Harvard or down the line, imploding, that somehow people are looking around and thinking, you know, if I send my kid there, they're going to come out crazy. I now know that because I've seen innumerable examples of that. If I have a law firm and I want to hire somebody from Yale law school, I'm going to get a woke nut an ideologue who is probably going to end up suing the firm over some weird thing.

I don't want to hire people from Yale law school. Like this is slowly happening. people aren't ready to talk about it too much, but where do you see it going? What do you see the hope for higher education, or do you think these institutions will be able to crawl along in the midst of this stuff? You know, a buddy of mine likes to call them woke madrasas now because the fundamentalism is just so strong. Yeah. I do think the indoctrination is bad, but leaving that aside, we could just talk about, you know, degrees that aren't even political.

I think there are a lot of, we have a surplus of so-called elites right now, people who graduate with degrees and all sorts of subjects, and then they actually don't have any skills to bring to the marketplace. So I think, you know, this is coming to the head and some of these political issues with, we've got the Biden administrations trying to push through a debt cancellation program, $440 billion.

And, you know, what's odd to me about this debate, the Supreme Court will hear this case, and it's going to hinge on some legal technicalities that are quite boring about, you know, whether someone has standing. But I think we can all agree that what's missing from this discussion is the culprit, which is the universities, which are, you know, turning out these graduates who have no skills, you know, that aren't, or they just don't have skills that the labor market rewards. So how is that going to change? is, you know, I do see it on the tech side where it's just easier to measure skill. And if you can do that, then, you know, you can get around the degree. We see that with engineers and so on all the time. People, there's a site called GitHub.

You upload your code. People vote on it. And in essence, that's your portfolio. You show up at an interview and you get a job. I meet a lot of conservatives and libertarians. It's interesting, you know, maybe we see alternatives emerge, college, maybe like Hillsdale college type stuff where people still have respect for the canon or, you know, the liberal arts and the true sense of the term. So maybe we see people move more and more towards universities

like that. But as for the big players, I think what we have to do is right now, in essence, I see the whole system as, you know, because I don't think college imparts skills, to be honest. I think, you know, there are two economic theories on higher education. One is the consensus view that the government believes, which is the human capital model. that you go to school, you learn things, and then those things are rewarded in the marketplace. But there's a whole body of research on what's called the signaling model. And in essence, that's, you know, is college a gem appraiser or is it a gem cutter? If it's an appraiser, they just get a stone, they look at it and they say, oh, this is valuable, this one's not.

If they're a gem cutter, they get a stone and then they actually cut it and make it more valuable. Well, the signaling theory says that universities are actually more like appraisers. You know, they're a way to sort through the labor market. Okay, here's a pool of people who have cognitive intelligence, you know, high levels, high IQ. But more than that, and probably more important, is that they're willing to undertake a four-year program, not raise a fuss, get their assignments done, turn them in on time, take orders, and graduate. So the labor market just rewards, you know, it uses higher education as a sorting mechanism to find these people. And then we have the government pay for it. So, you know, this whole system is just corrupt.

I think, you know, on the policy side, I would say it'd be great if the government stopped supporting higher education. Well, listen, first of all, to go back to what you were saying about forgiving college debt, think about it. Somebody mentioned this to me the other day, and I was a little bit astonished that I hadn't thought of this. But all of these colleges have taken money. They are not forgiving the debt. They're saying we're going to keep the money. And the endowments that places like Yale and Harvard have are, sick. They have so much money, it's sick. So they're taking money and then they're expecting

working class Americans through their taxes to forgive these debts. In other words, it's outrageous. They're not saying we'll forgive the debt because we believe it's such a noble thing, you know, so that these people aren't saddled with the debt. They obviously couldn't care less. They're happy to keep the money, but then they want to pass it off to taxpayers, most of whom didn't get a college education or didn't get that college education and ought never to be on the hook for that. So it's kind of an amazing thing. It's outrageous. I don't even know how this is being debated.

Right. You know, we can think of people, you know, working class people, work their sacrifice year after year. And they never went to college. And now we expect them to make transfer payments to someone who studied basket weaving. No, that's right. And look, and I want to say it again and again and again, ladies and gentlemen, when I say like I went to Yale University, That's not a statement of pride. I am in a unique position to know the bankruptcy of those places, spiritual, intellectual,

on every level. Trust me, I've been there. More with Michael Gibson. The book is Paper Belt on Fire. I wandered so aimless, I filled with sin. I wouldn't let my dear Savior in. Holy cow, I'm talking to Michael Gibson, and he wrote a book called Paper. paper belt on fire, how renegade investors sparked a revolt against the university.

This is very mischievous of you, Michael Gibson. I love that and I love the fact that you are calling universities out. You're not the only one, but calling universities out on just the monumental nonsense that they have been peddling forever. How many people do I know who went to college got absolutely nothing out of it, complete waste of their parents' money, whatever it is? People need to talk about this. People need to say getting that sheepskin ain't what it used to be.

If it was 1955 or 65, maybe, you know, you can make that case. But every decade since, the value has gone down. And it's just kind of like a baloney factory. Everybody seems to, oh, yeah, Harvard. Sorry. But the people that I know from those worlds have become part of the globalist Marxist elite. They hang out at Davos or they wish they did. they are not contributing to society.

No, I agree. The mischievous, I think, is really important because I think it is a true American virtue. I start the book with a quote from, you know, the last sentences of Huckleberry Finn. And I just love it because it's, you know, he says he, you know, Huck says he's got to go out to the territory. And, you know, if he sticks around, Aunt Sally's going to civilize him. and he can't stand that. He's been there before. So I feel, you know, I feel, you know, a lot of today's younger people in their teens, I think they should think hard about becoming civilized by Aunt Sally.

I think they got a, they got to head out to the territory. And I've had the privilege and fun to work with people who decided to skip out and do their own thing. And there's some mischievous quality to that. We talked earlier about what makes nations different. And Andrew Roberts is a wonderful biographer. And his latest book was, I believe, it's got this great title, The Last King of America, I think. And I saw an interview with Andrew Roberts where he was claiming that, you know, maybe the revolution, it would have been better if it didn't happen if America had stayed with the British. Because the argument is that, you know, slavery was ended in the early 1800s. We wouldn't have had the Civil War.

And then maybe World War I might not have happened because there's no way Germany would challenge the British Empire with still the North American continent. Okay, fine. But one of the things about the revolution and its consequences that stand out to me is just how dynamic and creative America is compared to the other Commonwealth countries. And especially if you look in most recently in the COVID response, just how authoritarian Australia and Canada were. compared, you know, and not that we were great, but by comparison, we were better. And certainly states, some states like Florida were even, you know, even better than that. So, you know, part of that I think is America's rebellious attitude. I think it does lend itself to that dynamism that we've been known for. And it is a torch that needs preserving and passed on. And so I, you know,

it's like maybe my story and some of these mischievous people I've worked with, you know, maybe by telling the story we can keep that flame alive. Well, look, there's a wildness at the heart of truth. And I think we have to be clear. I talk about this with regard to the Christian faith, that if it is a stayed religious in the negative sense faith, it's the kind of faith of Aunt Polly in, you know, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn.

It's pinched. It's feminized. It's moralistic. It is uncomfortable in the negative sense. It doesn't make a better man of you or a better woman of you. It's, it's, that's, you know, or in the Narnia Chronicles when they say is Aslan, you know, is he a tame lion? No, he's not tame. He's wild.

He's dangerous, but he's good. And I think that that's been part of the genius of America is that there's a wildness, but it's not anarchic. It is, it is a kind of wildness that is beautiful and that leads to great things. And I do think it's true that, you know, when you get, when you get rid of freedom, you know, you can become a socialist European country. And when you know, you talk about them having the rules in France, but all across Europe, they have these preposterous rules and strictures and regulations which crush freedom and creativity and actually crush the human spirit. Let's face it, our ability to see hope and to think I can do this or I can do that. They don't trust people. They just don't trust people in two ways.

They either think people are immoral by nature or that they're just incompetent. And so they have these rules that are meant to protect them. Whereas I think the American way has always been, hey, yeah, you know, these people are doing some wild things. But we should trust them to let them or, you know, they're going to be responsible for their personal consequences. Yeah, I think, you know, in American dynamism, I do see that Jerusalem and Athens, Athens polarity where truth and, you know, I always, it's like the, maybe all of our time right now is defined by that conversation between Pontius Pilate and Christ. You know, what is truth? Pilot says and, you know, Jesus speaks it. But the, you know, Athens is defined, you know, traditionally as, you know, these absolute theoretical truths related to math and science and so on. But I think we can't miss the truth of revelatory experience. You know, in the Bible, it's always,

It's always the individual against the crowd. You know, someone who believes something that seems unintelligible or something that's outside of normal language or experience. But, you know, it's the truth for them. That can be Abraham and then all the way to Christ. And so I think that tradition is very much part of creativity and innovation, as you said. Well, I love the idea that you're thinking along all these lines because they're related. There's just no way around it. And I do think that – but one way –

to frame how things have gone wrong in the culture and in the university is we've adopted this strict enlightenment view, this hyper-rationalistic view that cuts away, that cuts Jerusalem out, and it's all about Athens, and it's all about, so it's really not about truth, it's about facts. And facts don't add up to truth. Truth is something else entirely. If you're a Christian, you believe Jesus is true. truth. There's something way bigger than we've got these, you know, these syllogisms. I think that's right. We've come to the end of the Enlightenment project. Emmanuel Kant has a famous essay, what is the, what is enlightenment? And he defines it as

awakening from our immaturity. And immaturity, Kant defines as not being able to think for yourself, that, you know, you rely on authorities, your parents, whoever, and instead of coming to your own judgment, you rely on them. Well, having, you know, 200 years after the Enlightenment, science has become the endarkenedment because now we can't trust anyone. We're really touching on some heavy stuff here. Folks, don't go away. We will continue these and other sentences. Stick around.

Folks, we're talking to the polymathic Michael Gibson. The book is Paper Belt on Fire, How Renegate Investors sparked a revolt against the university. You were just saying, Michael, about, you know, in some ways, we come at the end of the Enlightenment. It really hit home for me already in the 90s when Bill Clinton was saying, we've got to get a computer or a laptop in every classroom for every kid. And I thought to myself, where do you get the idea that a dead tool is going to give people wisdom and whatever? You really reduced education to something far, far, far removed from what it once was. education is supposed to teach us about how do I become a better person?

How do I learn about the amazing universe? It was impossible at some point to divorce that from the question of God and the question of who we are. But things had devolved already to that point where it's all technocratic stuff and we just need information. We just need to get laptops in the hands of the kids in the ghetto and that'll solve their problems. And you think that's a really myopic view of humanity and our problems. But that's kind of where we are. That's kind of where the tech stuff takes us. It removes us from the question of what it means to be human, which to me was always at the center of what it is to be educated.

Yeah, I think that is a great illustration of this contradiction at the end of the Enlightenment, where we just see students now as these passive consumers of things that, you know, the teachers or the school are supposed to just shove into their minds and they must accept. Fauci is like the arch priest of the post, you know, the end of the Enlightenment. Don't think for yourself, I am the science. That there could, if Emmanuel Kant or whoever heard that, the Royal Society's motto is take no one's word for it, nullius and verba. So it's beyond me that science has become this, you know, that we must obey the authority. Well, let's call it what it is. Science is anti-science.

Science is at war with science. Science, quote unquote, is at war with science. And this is where we are and we have to call them out, you know, in a civilized society, Fauci and his girlfriend would be hanging upside down from a lamp post. It's just not, it's unbelievable to me that we would put up with this kind of stuff because we're nice people. But the idea that these elites would dare to talk in this high-handed way and to dictate. And that's really, that's coming out of the universities, which is why when I found out about your book, I said, we didn't use to create, these universities didn't use to create these kinds of people.

But that's now what they're doing. Yeah, I worry about that. And obviously, I'm trying to fight against it. So I want to be positive. But I worry about the destruction of that character in American society. As the cowboy disappeared, maybe the creative individual in America will disappear because we've got this industrial, colossal assembly line education system that just strips the soul of everyone who goes through it. Well, that's...

Just to end, on a positive note. Everywhere, I speak a lot around the country, and I, and I'm constantly meeting homeschoolers. They are unbelievably wise, educated, poised, socially mature. I think that they are there, the future of this country, and they're hidden. People don't realize, you know, you're not going to read about them in the New York Times. Yeah, we interacted with, when we started our program, we'd get applicants. and there were a lot of people who fit the mold of successful college people.

They had great schools, GPA, test scores. And then there was even the Intel Science Award. And we came to see that as a negative signal because these people who came through that, they were just when they were out in the wild in the real world, they were at a loss because they're just used to operating within a system. Whereas the homeschoolers, man, they were like ducks to the water. They just went out in the world and stuff. I'm telling you.

I'm telling you. And listen. And then there's crazy people like you and Peter Thiel and me and five of my friends. there is hope. Michael Gibson, congratulations on all you're doing. I love to meet you in person. The book is Paper Belt on Fire. Folks, get a copy. Michael, thank you very much. Thanks so much for having me on. Love it. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program. As you know, one of our sponsors on this program, I'm very happy to say, is Legacy Precious metals. I always want to encourage you to check

them out at LegacyPMInvestments.com slash Eric, LegacyPM Investments.com slash Eric, now and again, we get to talk to the CEO and founder, Charles Thorngren. This is one of those times. Charles, welcome. Thank you, sir. Happy to be here. So I've got, you know, some headline notes here. I want to ask you about because we're talking about finance. This is not something I pretend to understand. According to what I have in my hand here, it says that the first Republic Bank in San Francisco failed in early May. Do you think

the trend of banks failing will cool off or will this continue? What are we to make of this? It's kind of a chilling thing when somebody talks about a bank failing. It sounds like, you know, 1929. Yeah. And the reality is

you'll see more banks fail. When you have the federal chairman saying, we will have higher interest rates for longer. This is what affects the banks. And it sounds counterintuitive. But understand the way banks invest is they ladder their investments over long terms to generate a return for your savings account of your CDs. When you have interest rates rise like they have and they're going to be elevated for a longer period of time, that bank is now losing money.

How are they losing money? Because they went and bought bonds to cover their. necessity for their CD returns. The problem is they bought those bonds last year, the year before, and they're getting next to nothing on a return rate. So now they have to elevate their rate of return, but they can't because their money's tied up in bonds that they bought years ago. That's not meeting the demand of what they currently need.

And if they were to sell those bonds, they lose principal. So this is where you see bank failures who didn't have the foresight to say maybe these interest have to change. So you look at that and say, okay, where is this problem? It's a problem with your regional banks and your smaller banks and your community banks. For those people who didn't want to be in the big bank industry, they use their local bank. This is where it hits home artist. According to the notes I have here too, this is disturbing stuff. Over 25 million Americans reported, quote unquote, food insecurity. That was a the month of May, we have over six million Americans officially unemployed.

Right. You don't hear people talking very much about what's going on in the economy. It's kind of like we've moved on to other more horrible things. But this is the sort of thing that in normal circumstances, we would be talking about this day and night. And there are horrible things out there, but this should be the main focus. And this is why the fight in Congress is so important. to reestablish priorities for where we spend our money as a country.

We should be taking care of Americans. We should be making sure we create an environment where more people can work, that those who want to work have the ability to do so, and that you can feed your family. That is ultimately the American dream. To do a little bit better than your parents, own a home, be able to feed your family and save money for retirement. This is a period of time where that dream seems that.

out of reach for many, many people. Well, you know, it's funny because it's not like we're talking about self-interest, folks. If we believe in a strong America, the idea is that a strong America, a thriving, economically flourishing America makes it possible for us to reach out to those around the world, to share the gospel around the world, to share our freedoms, to spread our freedoms around the world. a humbled America, as we saw under Jimmy Carter, under Obama, under the current regime, is bad for the whole world. So that's one of the reasons this is important.

I want to say I've had personally positive experience with legacy precious metals. And I want to say this, Charles, just because you guys have kind of set this up brilliantly. when you go to legacy PM Investments.com slash Eric, which is of course what I'm recommending. But if you go to legacy PM Investments.com slash Eric, you can set up your own account. I did it in a hotel room. It's very easy to do.

It's user-friendly. And it kind of gives you like a financial dashboard. So you can check on your own portfolio. and you can buy metals yourself through that in, you know, real-time prices. So I'm just glad that you made it so user-friendly because people like me, you know, you have to make user-friendly. But I want to recommend that. How are gold and silver trending today?

You know, golden silver are down a little bit. And it's interesting. And also, normal. It's an investment. It does go up and down. But you look at it over the long term, you see there. growth that you're looking for. I've often said, and people who talk with me on the phone, never trust anything that goes straight up. When it comes down, it goes straight down. So

Golden's that we're doing what they're supposed to do. And we had this big hub of about a debt ceiling. Oh, we're going to, you know, default on our debt. So that created an interest in gold in the short term. So now that the debt ceiling for now is resolved, it pulled back a little bit. That's fine. That's a buying opportunity. because we're not buying gold in silver for instant returns. There's no such thing. It's an investment. We look at it for the long term.

I was just going to say that's a buying opportunity that means that I should buy gold. I mean, look, I wasn't like, I didn't know where you were going to go with that. It was not like a question like I asked it because I knew the answer. I didn't know the answer. So that's kind of interesting. Well, I just want to tell folks again, do yourself a favor. go to legacy PM Investments.com slash Eric, legacy pm investments.com slash Eric. Charles Thorngren, thank you.

We'll talk to you soon. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.